balthazar

You misinterpret: the Toro and Eldo did not have 'sideways' mounted V-8s- they were mounted as RWD vehicles are: longitudinally, not transversely. But the chain drive THM425s were deathly silent and had incredible durability.... what about either wouldn't today's buyer accept?? There's nothing to object over.

Thanks for the correction- I misremembered the color scheme. Blue over white, with a silver & blue cloth/leather interior. I got the "sweet" part dead-on, tho!

It would be... if he was wrong.

Was in NYC a few months ago; shocked at the quantity of toyota sienna taxicabs there...

I just looked at a GP for sale today: my buddy told me it was an "SJX" , so I was hoping he mistakenly was referring to an SJ, which is a 455 car. Triple black and "really nice" turned out to be a Model J, rust under the vinyl top, rust coming thru the wheelwells, rusted Rallye IIs, torn-up interior with speakers cut into the console, no chrome plating left. Not what I was looking for.... tho I still do dig the '69-72 generation. On the book cover is one of what I own, a '64. They are by far the most beautiful of all GPs, and moreso than scores of other cars. BTW- Don Keefe does excellent work- the book should definately be worth the price.

[/i]>>"How about first 1hp per cubic inch for a domestic car- optional in the model line...?"<<[/i] 1956 Chrysler 300-B: 355 HP 354 Hemi >>"How about first 1hp per cubic inch for a domestic car standard for a model line....?"<< 1957 DeSoto Adventurer: 345 HP 345 Hemi.

The famous 1959 Eldorado Seville (2-dr hardtop) Murder Car recently sold at Barret-Jackson for, I believe, $260K. The guy was shot in it in '59, and it stayed in a climate-controlled warehouse since; it has 5xxx miles on it. Sweet triple-white car.

VERY disappointing that BMW cheaped out and did not engineer a 9-speed auto to regain the class lead. Lexus's 8-spd is already a few years old.

My father also calculated he got 32 out of his 3.8 '89 LeSabre a few highway trip times.

I have Vista Vision and I love it. Ooops, you guys are talking computers and I'm talking windshields...

What argument? The point was merely that the car is ridiculously, BOF SUV-y heavy, and there's no excuse for it. No one mentioned the DTS or TC here. The hybrid powertrain struggles so hard to move all that, that it's outperformed in accel & MPG by the gas-engined version, so WTF do you get for $120K? Not weigh-saving tech, that's for sure. Think of the numbers for this pig if it weighed 4250. Toyota's 'image' with hybrids is all about economy- that's the perception and that's the PR push. But this car counters that hyperbole 180-degrees. From a PR standpoint, not top mention on the backs of growing evidence the hybrids shortfall of their numbers is class-leading in that respect... the left hand of toyota doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing.

OK: RECENT sedans. But to fit the definition-- 'Americanizing' of sedans in the last 30 years has been overwhelmingly making them smaller & lighter. Toyota is doing the opposite in the last 30 years. Perhaps the lexes is 'Japanizing'...

A hunnert an twenty thousand dollars??? WTF does toyota smoke to think the hybrid version, with worse mileage and performance and no cargo room, is worth even $5000 more?? God, the hyperbole... which by the way is what most of their (radio at least) advertising is relying on now. >>"Americanization?"<< What American sedan weighs 5100 lbs? I'm with reg: for the ridiculous money both charged, and in the coffers in toyko, the ls should be all-aluminum and weigh no more than 4000. Slice a few billion of the ad budget and hire some more engineers.

My father worked for 40 years for the DOD as an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Trenton. Last aircraft he worked on was the F-22 Raptor, before retiring.

Didn't the '71 wagons likewise get the Flo-Thru ventilation louvers on the tailgate, like the coupes/sedans? That should jog your memory about it being a '71 or not. Friend of mine had a '76 Estate Wagon into the late '80s at least and the clamshell still worked fine. Pretty positive it was the downsizig of '77 that killed the feature.

Did it take hyundai "maybe a decade of solid 1000 batting" to get to --say-- a Chevy or toyota-level of prestige?? And tha coming from a unilaterally wretched history of utter automotive garbage. Why does Buick, with traditional high quality, need this "decade" in your book??

>>"No one shopping for an LS will even consider a DTS. I'm not saying the DTS has no place at Cadillac (it does, as long as there's a market for it) -- just that it's nowhere near an LS, far less an S or a 7 or an A8. "<< Just an anecdote: My millionaire friend owned 2 Cadillacs (the 2nd a '96 Brougham), and replaced that one with an s-class. "Never again" he said firmly after a few trouble-laden years with the s-class, which he dumped just before the warranty ran out. He claimed he would go back to Cadillac instead, tho since then he's only bought fully-loaded Tahoes instead.

I was pedaling the 10-speed thru my neighborhood tonight around 8:30 PM, so it was getting darker than it should've been for a lightless-bike to be out, but I live on the edge that way. Saw something I remembered seeing in the early spring this year: a mercedes sedan parked on a quiet side-street in a line of cars, it's driver-side taillight & front parking light ONLY on. No one around, car locked up tight. I assumed it was some sort of convoluted safety device, a 'Look! My car's parked here in the dark!' sort of thing. Problem with that was that tonight I saw one of their R-minivans doing the same thing... in a residential driveway. Is this indeed a 'safety' feature? Is it optional, and can it be overridden... or does half the car's parking lights stay on all night long?

B-57 looks great so far, looks DONE in fact, from here! I remember lifting the corner of a tarp in a junkyard and seeing a BLACK '57 Bonne, rough but complete and still wearing it's emblems. Biker dude behind the counter interrupted my question with 'Don't even ask about it', and it promptly disappeared. That was a good 10 years ago and it has not surfaced yet. Supposedly there were only 2 or 3 factory-black '57 Bonnes. Not sure if you were being literal, but such was NOT the case in the U.S. : 1965 Pontiac, grand total: 802,000 units, 60,383 wagons, 1971: 586,xxx units, 39,xxx wagons. Chevy, 1965: 243,500 wagons. Cadillac has sold in the neighborhood of 375,000 in one model year (late '70s).

Enclave is aiming at less 'Joe Sixpacks' than any previous Buicks ever did.

Of course, Cadillac never ran print ads with top-to-bottom numbers reading "472" or "500" like lexus is running print ads with a giant "8" on the page . In fact, Cadillac had only 1 print ad featuring the 472, and none featuring the 500... and the only model to get any engine ID badges were the '70-72 E's, even tho the E had the 500 thru '76 and the big cars ran it '75-76. And Cadillac didn't build a larger engine than Lincoln until '68, even tho dispalcements were rising steadily in the preceding decades (Cadillac: '49 : 331, '56 : 365, '59 : 390, '64 : 429). I don't see it being about that at all.But yes, the 472/500 was a better engineered and performing engine than Lincoln's 460 (tighter tolerances, better longevity, better alloys, better power, better efficiency), but drag performance was never the purpose of these cars.

I did the heater core on my '64 Catalina after driving 45 minutes to hang with my buddies at the 24-hr gas station. Took about 30 minutes to change it (Cat did not have A/C). It's easy. Bring it over, we'll shove her in the shop and bang it out.

The part where your refer to the SAME powertrain, largely SIMILAR chassis (different wheelbase & track), completely DIFFERENT interior and completely DIFFERENT sheetmetal and call the Mustang 'a Falcon with bucket seats'. If you stood between a '64 Falcon & Mustang, you would not realize they had the same beginning engineering roots. You actually could get buckets in a Falcon Sprint in '64- wonder how Ford knew which emblems to put on the car? The 2 are PRIMARILY 2 different cars, moreso than the same. Are you also of the opinion that the '76 Seville is a 'Nova with a Cadillac grille'? It's this sort of dismissiveness that enables the faint damning far too much of the domestic offerings, starting in the past and extending right up to the present (M/T's review of the Enclave: "GM tries to eradicate badge engineering, again"). Sorry, I have difficulty sitting on my tongue when I see what I consider to be historical slander (IMO).

LS family sure has a damned stout block.

Clearly the middle 3/4-rear view is a different design, and that one is quite interesting. But the front is very very tired and needs to be dumped. It hasn't been a draw since the '80s and regardless of the decades it's been reguritated onto the showroom floor, there's not much value in it, IMO. That middle car is slick, but the showroom version will be hard pressed to come even close in proportion & line.